I've made up my mind how I will do the intakes. Basically I'll build a core from cardboard to which I will glue strips of styrene that then form an outer shell. Once the glue has cured I'll soak the cardbord in water and it will become "mushy". This will make it easy to remove it from the core. Then I will cut the core in two halfs (lengthwise) in order to sand the inside of the intake. Then the inside will be foiled and riveted. Now, this won't be a seamless sucker, but if you look at the inside of the real thing you'll see that there are very pronounced panel lines and rivets.

If you think that this sounds like a lot of work, then you are perfectly right. But I've done a "proof-of-concept" intake (well, part of an intake, anyway) already and it works!

I've made up my mind how I will do the intakes. Basically I'll build a core from cardboard to which I will glue strips of styrene that then form an outer shell. Once the glue has cured I'll soak the cardbord in water and it will become "mushy". This will make it easy to remove it from the core. Then I will cut the core in two halfs (lengthwise) in order to sand the inside of the intake. Then the inside will be foiled and riveted. Now, this won't be a seamless sucker, but if you look at the inside of the real thing you'll see that there are very pronounced panel lines and rivets.

If you think that this sounds like a lot of work, then you are perfectly right. But I've done a "proof-of-concept" intake (well, part of an intake, anyway) already and it works!

Cheers

Rainer

Sounds good Rainer

Intakes are always hard to make no matter what method you use. Alternatively (and I have not yet tried this) you could get hold of some water soluble air drying modelling clay (DAS make a goog range:http://www.eckersleys.com.au/products/das-air-dry-clay) which you could either overlay on your cardboard intake core or even a smaller diameter balsa wood core. Once dry, you could then plank it with plastic card then soften/dissolve the clay in water to allow you to remove the core. This should leave you with pretty much a seamless intake.

Derek

Edited February 9, 2014 by Derek B

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water soluble clay sounds interesting. I've got some air drying modelling clay, but It's not water soluble once it is completely dry... Hmm, gets me thinking. Water soluble clay would indeed open up some nice possibilities. Thanks for the tip.

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I hope you all had a merry Christmas with lots of turkey (allways remember: you don't gain weight between Christmas and New Year but between New Year and Christmas!) and even more styrene or resin under the tree (me, I got 2 square meters of styrene sheet and a nice selection of Evergreen rod, tubes and channels )

Derek, Hakan, Kev, Richard, Loic, Maru: Thank you very much for your kind comments and for your interest in this project.

It's been a while since the last update but I didn't want to bother you with more frames and stringers. It gets a bit boring... But I did make some progress and here is where I am at the moment.

Here is the aft section that will house the afterburner can.

Next is the fwd mid section, the intake section:

And here two views of the cockpit section:

The hatched areas (cockpit tub and NLG well) have been pre-cut and some gentle persuasion with a knife should be enough to remove them once the skin panels are glued in place.

Here is the complete structure of the port fuselage half:

And just to show you how big that bird actually is I've included my clumsy hand in the next pic:

I had to modify about half of the frames (as compared to my original drawings) to get the transitions between them as smoth as possible and to match the pictures I have. A kingdom for correct cross section drawings! But I think that I've captured the general shape of the Viggen reasonably well if not entirely correct. As long as it looks like a Viggen I'll be happy enough.

Next is the intake. I've not yet made up my mind how to do it. Those suckers suck (pun intended)! Once I've found a solution for the intakes I'll just have to muster all the mojo I can to do it all over again for the starboard side of the fuselage . How I wish to do some details. That is so much more fun than frames and stringers...

Thanks for looking

Rainer

Blimey Rainer that does look very good, and it does make for a big model when you see your hand in the picture,

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Thanks again for your continued interest in this poroject, gents. It's very motivating for me!

Well, I didn't have much bench time lately so this is just a very small update, basically to show you that I'm still working on this Viggen. I startet the intake construction. The pic below shows the cardboard structure that will be covered with styrene strips that then form the outer shell of the suckers. Once the shell is complete I will cut each intake into two parts lengthwise, remove the cardboard structure and sand the insides smooth. Then the inner surfaces will be foiled since all my references show NMF finish of the insides.

Sorry for the messy work bench, but that's how it looks after cutting all the frames for the fuselage. All those styrene scraps will be used to make liquid sprue (should be called "liquid sheet" in this case, because the scraps are all from styrene sheet ).